Begin rant. Pardon the rambling.

I took a long off spell from bowhunting. Last year I started back with my recurve. I didn't get a shot in my comfort range. I got a new PSE this year. I've been shooting it daily for the last 3 months. It's fine tuned. I haven't shot a deer with a bow in nearly 2 decades. I told my hunting buddies that the first legal deer that came in range, was getting an arrow in it. This afternoon a lone doe came out in a food plot. She was 60 yards when she came out, and feeding away from me. She fed around for 5 minutes or so, then she turned, and walked across the plot, stopped broadside to me at 35 yards and went back to feeding. I put my 30 yards pin just behind her shoulder and let one fly. The only way I could describe the sound of the arrow hitting the deer would be to imagine someone hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat. She ran down the plot, went into the woods, then crashed. Then she ran some more and crashed. DRT I figured. I still had good enough light to get down and start looking in the plot. The plot is dusty dry, so I had little to work with but did find good blood where she entered the woods. I did not find my arrow, where the deer was standing, nor did I find any hair. I figured the arrow was buried up in the dry powdery dust, and I could find it tomorrow. I came to the house and waited. I waited about an hour, and headed out with my 3 month old beagle puppy. I wanted Ginger to "find" her first deer. We tracked the deer about 75 yards, and there was the arrow. That nice new Grim Reaper was still CLOSED, just like it was when the arrow left the bow. There was no blood on the broadhead. The once white, wrap and fletchings were soaked in blood. I followed the blood for another 75 yards, then the blood trail stopped. I found where the deer had lost it's dinner in the woods. Fresh grass and rape. Not sure what that means, but I will go back in the morning and see if the deer maybe bedded down in the creek.

I'm damn sure not a fan of Grim Reaper heads. That deer was hit good, the broadhead should have opened. If it had, I would have the deer skinned by now and hanging in the barn. I WILL NEVER SHOOT ANOTHER MECHANICAL HEAD. I don't care how many deer have been killed with them. I don't care if the world record is killed with a Grim Reaper next week. I read all I could. I worked the blades by opening and closing them to loosen them up. The damn thing ABSOLUTELY FAILED.

Deer here are about as rare as hens teeth. It makes me sick to my stomach to know I lost one. I may find the deer in the morning, and the meat should be fine as cold as it is tonight, but I really doubt that I find it. I've followed more than one blood trail that stopped with no deer at the end of it. There is usually not a happy ending to those stories.

i hate losing a deer even if it is a doe, it really bothers me. the last one i lost i said i would never shoot another one with a bow, but that was a lie. maybe you will find her in the morning

It bothers me too. I'm more pissed off than anything right now. I did my part, schitty high dollar broadhead failed. A lost deer is a waste. I can't eat the antlers anyway. Now, I do like to shoot the ones with the big antlers, but I was ready to put some good meat in the freezer.

Sorry to hear about your doe Furflyin. Mechanicals are great, when they work, but Muzzy's just don't fail to open. I don't mean that like I'm rubbing it in your face, it's just that I know several people that have tried mechanicals and come back to a fixed blade within a year or two. Mainly because of an incident like yours happened to them. I sure hope you find it tomorrow.

You are exactly right. If not for wanting to shoot a 3 blade, I'd be screwing my Magnus heads to my arrows right now. I'll likely be buying Muzzy's come Monday. I have shot a lot of COC broadheads, but never Muzzy's. Do yours fly true with the field tips? My bow is shooting a 2 blade Magnus with the field tips, but like I said, I've never tried the Muzzy's.

I once had a bow that wasn't tuned real well and broadheads didn't fly the same as my field points. With the bow I'm hunting with now, I can interchange broadheads and field points without affecting point of impact. If yours wont do this, it could be a tuning issue. If you are having trouble with that, Larry Odell is the best bow man I know of around here.

Mine is tuned as good as it can get I think. It is shooting the Slim Jim Reapers, field points and a Magnus broadhead all the same. Yep, ol Larry is a good un.

I have heard the watermelon sound! I gut shot a deer late one afternoon and heard that same sound, went back the next morning and found the deer approimately 150 yards from where I shot it. He had cross a creek and just made it up to the top of the bank when he died. I think the cold water rushing into the wound helped put the deer down due to shock. If you run out of blood try looking around for the closest water source.
If the deer has not been pushed it should have bedded up pretty quickly.

Good luck!

Grim reapers are supposed to close after they exit. It is the way theyre designed. It is dang near impossible from them to fail. Just google grim reaper failures. Most of the "failures" ending up being shot placement. I'm not saying you made a bad shot, but until you find the deer we can't say for sure.

As for fixed vs mechanical, the only reason to shoot mechanical is accuracy. Any time you put wings on something you give it the ability to steer itself. The fixed blades would act as wings. As for mechanicals, anything mechanical can fail. Thats why I shoot the ones with the smallest failure rate. That's why I shot grim reaper.

Hope you find your deer.

"smallest failure rate"????

why not shoot a broadhead with no failure rate???

like any number of fixed head broadheads?

This broadhead DID NOT OPEN. There is no evidence on the broadhead and no blood on the shaft until the wrap. As for accuracy, I bought into the mechanical is more accurate Bull Schit. A Magnus 2 blade solid piece of steel broadhead flies in the same place as my 100 grain field points and the Grim Reapers. A tuned bow that is then broadhead tuned will shoot anything as accurately as a field point. Back in the day I shot Jerry Simmons broadheads with my compound. They were something like 1 3/4" wide. Guess what, they flew just like field tips.

Ohh I see, pardon my humor.

I understand.

Fixed it for you.

Sorry but until you find the deer (if you do) and show me the two pencil holes on both sides I just reject these it didn't open stories that are based on nothing more than not finding the deer and the head being closed after a pass through. Most mech heads close again after a pass through or as you pull them from the ground. But even a closed head through the lungs or heart would equal a dead deer. Can you open the head with your fingers? If so then there is no reason it would not open on a deer.

Also people lose deer all the time with fixed heads too. In fact since there are way more people using fixed heads than mechs (heck I still use them too) I'd bet you that "more" deer are hit and lost with fixed heads. It's just in those cases the hunter knows they can't run to the internet and find a group of people who will throw their arms around them and let them dog the lost deer off on the broadhead.

If you don't find the deer, you don't know what happened. People should have a decal on their truck windows that say that. I can't count the number of times I have helped a friend or family member look for a difficult to find deer that was "Hit Good" only to discover when we actually found it that "uh oh", it wasn't hit so good after all. If that has been the case with the ones we found then I'm going out on a short limb and bet that it's also the case with the ones that we didn't find. 99% of lost deer, despite all the excuses and misplaced blame are actually due to bad shot placement.

No way to know for sure at this point but I'll tell you what it could mean. If any blood runs into an animals stomach it will throw up. So will humans if blood runs into their stomach.

If your bow shoots fixed broadheads well, there is absolutely no reason to not shoot them. If by chance you do not have a complete pass through a fixed blade will not fold back up and will continue to slice and dice causing damage with every move the deer makes. More damage = more chance of finding a dead deer!

Which is why some people use mech heads. If you have the power they make a very big hole. A muzzy buried one inch deeper than one of my reapers in the ground on the other side of a deer is of no benefit to me that I can fathom.

Hmmm, hit sounded like a gut shot. Deer regurgitating stomach content along the blood trail as though some blood got into the stomach. A blood trail that petered out as they often will with a gut shot because they commonly clog with stomach or fecal content.

So lets add these facts together and what do we get? Yep, no doubt about it, broadhead failure. LOL!

No, not really. That's a wide paintbrush assuming everyone shoots a mech because they can't tune a bow. Ease of screwing in a field point on one target butt, two-finger removal, less target butt damage, and shooting all I want is my reason.

Read and comprhend the entire post. Sticking in the ground would indicate a complete pass through, would it not? The "more damage = more chance of finding a dead deer" related to the broadhead staying in the deer.

Have fun with the reapers.